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Last week I presented a paper at the Eleventh Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament, as announced in my previous post. In the paper, I examined five classic objections to the theory that Codex Bezae’s Greek text form has appropriated text forms from the Latin version, concluding that none of these objections entirely succeeds in excluding the possibility that Bezae’s collection of distinctive Latin parallels might have arisen as readings in the Old Latin version.

In the discussion following my talk, a sixth objection was raised, namely, that parallels between the Old Latin and Old Syriac suggest that a common source lies behind them both, presumably resembling Bezae’s Greek text.

In my answer, I noted that Bezae’s text form is only distantly related to the Old Syriac, at least in Mark.1 In Mark, for example, Bezae’s text is more closely aligned with the text of Codex Vaticanus. So Bezae is not a good candidate to represent the source of the Old Syriac, at least in this gospel.

Moreover, in my paper, I pointed out that Bezae is unlikely to represent the source of the Old Latin version, which requires no Bezan source to explain its development. Its text forms, where they differ from Greek witnesses, likely arose through translation and inner-versional copying.

So if the Old Latin and Old Syriac require a common source, which is doubtful, a text like Bezae’s is probably not it.

Syriac Traditions in a Greek Text that Borrows Latin Readings

Nevertheless, Bezae’s text form does have a relationship with Syriac traditions, apparently dating to the time after Aphrahat (d. c. 345), as I argue in my essay on Codex Bezae’s Lukan Genealogy, which depends on a list of names found only in Aphrahat. In this case, it is clear that Bezae is not the source of the list in Syriac, because Bezae develops Aphrahat’s list of names, even introducing an erroneous name in the process. So Bezae’s contact with Syriac traditions likely occurred in the latter fourth century, after the time of Aphrahat.

But how are we to explain Syriac contact in a Greek manuscript, whose text form seems to borrow from the Latin version?

One explanation relates to contact between the Greek and Latin languages in the East, where Bezae was likely produced.2 There was little if any true bilingualism in the East at the time of Bezae’s production. The situation is best described as diglossia, the side-by-side coexistence of languages in separate domains, where the use of Latin was confined primarily to official contexts, namely, the military, the civil administration, and the law.3

If Bezae was produced in such a context, it is unlikely to have been prepared for a bilingual congregation. Even in centers of Roman culture in the East, such as Berytus, the churches were Greek speaking.4

It is likely then that the Latin version of Bezae’s Latin parallels and Latin column was approached as a written source, much like the Latin legal documents of the law school. Indeed, Bezae’s legal script supplies a valuable clue that its production took place at or near a legal center, such as Berytus, or among individuals who had received their training at such a legal center.5

John of Palestine: A Latin-Trained, Syriac-Speaking Scribe

In his account of the Christian community at Berytus in the latter fifth century, Zacharias of Mytilene describes a certain John of Palestine, a monk at the monastery of Saint Jude, just outside of Berytus, who

after training in the law, had consecrated himself to God in that church [of Jude], adopting the philosophical life-style … [and had] benefited many of those studying law in that city, … because of the (collection of) Christian books that he owned, which he shared and gave out.6

The fact that John had amassed a collection of books suggests that he was a scribe. After all, an individual ascetic would have had little other means by which to acquire books.

As a well-educated native of Palestine, we can assume that John was fluent in both Greek and Aramaic, while as a former law student, he would have been literate in both Greek and Latin. So in John of Palestine we find a Latin-trained, Syriac-speaking scribe.

Peter of Iberia’s Recruitment of Latin-Trained Monks in Palestine

Apparently, John was not alone among the Latin-trained monks of Syria and Palestine. In his account of Peter the Iberian, John Rufus describes Peter’s deliberate recruitment of law students to his monastic community:

When he [Peter] came to Beirut, he was recognized immediately by the young lawyers, his acquaintances from Palestine and from Alexandria … Some of them while he was still alive and some after his departure would reject the vanity of the world and run to him.7

Among Peter’s law recruits identified by Rufus (who was also trained at Berytus) were Theodore of Ascalon, Anastasios of Edessa, and Elisha of Lycia, all former students of the law school at Berytus. Rufus describes how Peter had received a vision instructing him specifically to recruit lawyers to his monastic community:

God wanted that there should be offered to him also from [among] the lawyers rational sacrifices and whole burnt offerings, able to carry his cross and follow him, like Basil and Gregory and John and Arsenius, and those who are like them in zeal.8

But every one of these recruits must have known Latin, because Roman law was promulgated in Latin, even in the East, down through the time of Justinian. So we cannot assume that Latin was wholly unfamiliar among the monks of Syria and Palestine. A Greek text such as Bezae’s, accompanied by a Latin column, would not have been entirely inaccessible in the Syriac world among those trained in law who inhabited its monastic communities.

Bezae’s Text and Miaphysite Monasticism in Syria, Palestine, and Egypt

Therefore, when we encounter errors in Bezae suggesting that its producers were not fully competent in literary Latin and Greek, a natural inference is that their native language was neither Greek nor Latin, but a third language, such as Syriac.9 Here we find a second clue as to Bezae’s origins, linking it potentially with the monastic communities of Syria and Palestine (and, ultimately, Egypt) among those trained in Roman law.

As the Chalcedonian settlement split apart the Eastern church, it is not difficult to imagine such a text ending up among the miaphysite communities of middle Egypt, where something like it appears in Codex Glazier, and still later in the Harklean marginal notes of Acts, produced outside of Alexandria by the Syrian miaphysite, Thomas of Mabug. So exchange between the monastic communities of Syria, Palestine, and Egypt supplies one explanation for the appearance of Bezan text forms in Syriac and Coptic. This more refined theory is at least as plausible as the usual theory that Bezae’s text form represents the original source behind both the Latin and Syriac versions.

This week I will be presenting a paper at the Eleventh Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament, where the theme of the colloquium is the versions and other indirect textual evidence for the New Testament. My paper looks at the history of scholarship on the theory that Latin readings have significantly influenced Bezae’s Greek text in its final form. The title of the paper is “Has Pervasive Influence of the Old Latin Version on Codex Bezae’s Greek Text Form Been Disproved? An Examination of Some Key Objections to the Theory of Latin Influence on Bezae’s Greek Text.”

Of course, the prevailing theory concerning Bezae’s distinctive parallels with the Latin version is that these readings are native Greek text forms that have been faithfully conveyed in Latin by translators of the Old Latin version. This view was expressed by J. S. Semler in his Apparatus ad liberalem Novi Testamenti interpretationem (1767), where he observes that “the Latin copies were originally translated from the same Greek codices from which many Greek copies of a different kind [such as Codex Bezae] were transcribed.” 1

This earlier view was challenged, not only by Semler, but also by J. D. Michaelis, J. J. Griesbach, H. Marsh, and D. D. Schultz, who laid the groundwork for the current consensus in a series of objections to the notion that parallels with the Latin version found in Bezae’s Greek column might have arisen as renderings in the Latin version.2 These objections include:

The prevailing direction of assimilation between Bezae’s columns is from the Greek to the Latin rather than the Latin to the Greek (Michaelis and Schultz)

Sufficient diversity exists within the Greek tradition to account for Bezae’s Latin parallels without appeal to the Latin version (Semler and Griesbach)

A Bezan text is likely to lie at the source of the Latin version (Semler and Griesbach)

The notion that an original language text, such as Bezae’s Greek column, might have appropriated renderings from a secondary version is contrary to reason (Semler and Marsh)

My paper argues that none of these objections upon which the present theory relies and by which it distinguishes itself from the earlier opinion entirely succeeds in excluding the possibility that Bezae’s significant collection of distinctive Latin parallels might have arisen through the influence of readings in the Old Latin version, though not necessarily its own Latin column.

The abstract follows:

Before the mid-eighteenth century, it was generally assumed by figures such as Erasmus, R. Simon, H. Grotius, F. Lucas Brugensis, W. H. Estius, J. Mill, J. A. Bengel, and J. J. Wettstein among others, that Codex Bezae’s Greek text form, where it parallels the Latin version — often with little or no additional Greek support — has been influenced by readings of the Latin version. Such an inference is understandable given Bezae’s Greek-Latin format and frequent divergence from the rest of the Greek tradition in agreement with one or more witnesses of the Old Latin version. But in his Apparatus ad liberalem Novi Testamenti interpretationem, published in 1767, J. S. Semler challenged this earlier assumption, arguing that the theory of Latin influence on Bezae’s Greek text form was, not only contrary to reason, but also unnecessary. Semler argued that there was sufficient diversity within the Greek tradition to account for Bezae’s Latin parallels without appeal to the Latin version as their source, suggesting that, rather than reflecting Latin influence, a text like Bezae’s lay at the source of the Latin version. Taking up Semler’s critique, J. D. Michaelis strove “to rescue the [Bezan] copyist from the charge” of Latinizing a Greek text, while D. D. Schultz assembled instances in which Bezae’s Latin column appears to depend on errors in the Greek column, believing that he had thereby settled the question.3 H. Marsh summed up the sentiments of many when he remarked that “[i]t is surely more reasonable to suppose, that a translation would be altered from an original, than an original from a translation.”4 Since Semler, the notion that Latin readings may have influenced Bezae’s Greek text form has generally been dismissed, with F. J. A. Hort calling it “a whimsical theory of the last century.”5 More recently, B. M. Metzger summarized the state of the question, observing that “the theory finds little or no support among present-day scholars.”6

In this paper, I propose to reexamine some of the key objections to the theory that Bezae’s Greek text form has been widely influenced by the Old Latin version, arguing that none of the traditional objections entirely succeeds in excluding the possibility that Bezae’s substantial collection of peculiar Latin parallels might have arisen through the influence of readings in the Old Latin version, but not necessarily its own Latin column. I will observe that much of the discussion in the literature has conflated two distinct problems: while critics have tended to view the problem in terms of the direct translation of Bezae’s own Latin column, the theory’s early proponents understood the problem more broadly in terms of the selective influence of the wider Latin version. Yet demonstrations purporting to disprove the entire theory have typically addressed only the former problem. Meanwhile, the question of plausibility has been framed too quickly in terms of modern critical and editorial biases, which strongly prioritize the Greek text as original, while neglecting to consider historical contexts that might have preferred Latin over Greek readings. Clearly though, the question can be addressed satisfactorily only in light of ancient opinion. In light of this apparent failure of the traditional objections, I will conclude by suggesting that the pervasive dependence of Bezae’s Greek text form on the Old Latin version remains very much an open question.

This week I am heading to the University of Birmingham for the Tenth Birmingham Colloquium on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. It will be my first attendance at this colloquium. On Wednesday, I will present a paper entitled “Codex Bezae’s Lukan Genealogy (Luke 3:23-38) as a ‘Living Text’.”

Bezae’s Lukan genealogy is a text I have discussed in a number of blog posts, particularly in relation to the (nearly) parallel list of names supplied by Aphrahat in his Demonstration 23 (in Syriac). Bezae’s Lukan genealogy makes a particularly elegant case study given that few of Bezae’s variations are so clearly secondary. Not only is the problem it solves patently evident (i.e. harmonizing the genealogies), but there are clear traces of the editor’s work in the text and (as I will propose) in the codex itself. Moreover, any argument that Bezae reflects the earlier text form must account for the mainstream tradition. If Bezae’s unified genealogy were the initial text form, why would anyone then replace this with a different genealogy in the mainstream tradition?

The genealogy is also instructive for its illumination of the history of the text. While we might naturally expect Bezae’s Greek text form to represent the source of Aphrahat’s Syriac list of names, in the genealogy we find evidence of secondary development in Bezae’s text, for example, in the duplication of Jehoiakim’s place in the genealogy, suggesting an incomplete grasp of the significance of Aphrahat’s list of names.

At the colloquium, I will approach Bezae’s Lukan genealogy as a “living text,” that is, as a possibly secondary text form that nevertheless stands on its own as a significant contribution to our understanding of the early Christian community who used it as their Lukan genealogy.

The abstract follows:

Codex Bezae’s Lukan Genealogy (Luke 3:23-38) as a “Living Text”:
The Genealogy of Jesus in the Traditions of Codex Bezae and Aphrahat

At eighty words, Codex Bezae’s variant text of the genealogy of Jesus in Luke 3:23-31 presents one of the longest variations in the gospels. Yet the resulting genealogy, while essentially harmonized to Matthew’s names, is no mere assimilation to Matthew, but reflects in several respects the editor’s touch, for example, including Old Testament kings lacking in Matthew’s list, adapting Matthew’s list to Luke’s phraseology, and rearranging the names to follow Luke’s Christ-to-Adam sequence. The end result is a text that betrays little apparent interest in reproducing a putative “original,” but rather reveals a process of development within the community (or communities) that superintended its growth. In this paper, I will suggest that Prof. Parker’s paradigm of the living text offers a particularly apt framework for understanding Bezae’s Lukan genealogy, arguing that close examination of Bezae’s text as a “living text” leads to some surprising results that challenge common conceptions of textual history. I will show that, while clearly dependent on a tradition shared with Aphraates, Bezae’s apparently-mistaken duplication of Jehoiakim’s name — which appears under both his birth and regnal names — and the consequent disruption to the numerology presupposed by Aphraates’ tradition, indicates that, far from representing Aphraates’ source (as might be presumed under the typical assumption that Bezae represents an ancient second-century text form), Bezae rather reflects a derivative and perhaps later form of Aphraates’ tradition, calling into question whether Bezae’s Lukan genealogy can be considered a second-century or even Diatessaronic tradition and prompting us to look to other contexts, possibly as late as the end of the fourth century, for a suitable backdrop to Bezae’s text form.

Peter Lorenz November 22, 2018 at 7:06 pm on Back to the USA and Research StatusHi Tim, Thank you! A happy Thanksgiving to you as well! I appreciate your best wishes. It's great to hear...

Timothy Joseph November 22, 2018 at 12:08 pm on Back to the USA and Research StatusPete, First, Happy Thanksgiving 🦃! I look forward to hearing of your successful defense of your dissertation! Hopefully, I will...